


From Holy Hands

by Ariasune



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-02-13 11:38:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12983277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariasune/pseuds/Ariasune
Summary: By the time he was ten, Akhnadin knew only two true things about his older brother: first, that he was a good man, and second, that he was not ready to be King.[ HIATUS -10/04/19]





	From Holy Hands

By the time he was ten, Akhnadin knew only two true things about his older brother: first, that he was a good man, and second, that he was not ready to be King.

They sat together as they often did, in the shade of the gardens, beside a lush, green pool, both of them contained in their slow, mournful silence. The coronation was approaching quickly, and the memory of their father was still awkwardly balanced between them. _We feel_ , Akhnadin thought, dipping a sandalled foot into the pool, _like_ _the_ _set of scales, upon which we balance the red heart of our father, and the blue truth of his life._

Selk had been-- well, now he was not much of anything, Akhnadin supposed, but when they had been young, their father had been fierce and prideful. Not kind, Akhnadin knew, and more than unkind, their father had been distant in more than one way. He had been somewhere else, winning wars and earning kingdoms. Selk had been arrogant, headstrong, fierce, and most importantly, now dead, and thus leaving Akhnakanem, scarcely sixteen, holding together conquered lands.

So, the brothers sat together, in the safety and cool of their home, and mourned themselves far more than they mourned their father.

“Have you… given much thought to your throne name?” Akhnadin ventured, watching Akhnakanem toy with the sand under his fingertips.

“Dju,” Akhnakanem flicked a speck into the pool. “Or so I’m told. It might hold the Kingdoms together.” He sounded listless, incredulous, and Akhnadin bit his lip in embarrassment.

“Two falcons, two lords,” Akhnadin turned the name over and over in his mouth, a conspicuous uselessness inside of him. “That might help,” the words felt watered down inside of him, and he sighed. “No. No it won’t. The cities are too angry for that.”

Akhnakanem looks at him from the corner of his eye. “Has anyone told you how encouraging you are, little brother?”

“Not lately.”

“Not ever,” Akhnakanem huffed, leaning back into the palms of his hands and throwing his head back until light glinted off the gold in his ears. “You’re too honest, Akhnadin.”

“Honesty is the mark of Ma’at,” he answers primly.

“Don’t lecture me on religion, little brother,” Akhnkanaem’s smirks, eyes closed against what little light reaches them through the palm leaves. “Or will you be promising yourself to the Gods, and taking the white sandles? My little brother? A Priest?”

Akhnakanem is teasing, and Akhnadin reaches down to gather a palmful of water, tossing it as his elder brother lightly. Still, Akhnakanem only gives a breathy sigh: “A blessing! A blessing from Akhnadin the Priest!”

“You don’t _need_ blessings,” Akhnadin shoves his brother a little. “You’re the God-King, or…” the mood evaporates, Aknakanem’s eyes opening against the thin light, “...or you will be. Soon.”

“Ah,” Akhnakanem mumbles reluctantly, “soon.”

Akhnadin watches his brother fold in on himself, curling into himself. “You are the Horus-King,” he murmurs.

“Not yet,” Akhnakanem’s voice is cool, distant. “Not for long, maybe…”

The pool of water is cold against Akhnadin’s toes, and he draws his feet out of the water. There are only two true things Akhnadin knows about his brother, but there are a thousand true things Akhnadin knows about himself, and the first is that his father was a distant, but not cold man. He was harsh as heat, and Akhnakanem had always stood before him. Akhnakanem was the one who had hidden them in the shaded gardens, and far rooms of the palace, away from Selk’s bright anger, away from his fire.

The second truth is that Akhnadin will pray every dawn, and every dusk for the rest of his life, that the Gods really would bring blessings for Akhnakanem, and if they did not, then Akhnadin would stand between his brother, and the fire.

* * *

The possibility of war is sitting inside their borders with heavy, wolfish pants, and the reality of the situation is breathing down their necks. _It feels as though,_ Akhnadin thinks _, there are starving dogs inside the home, and we are the only meat here._

What he tells his brother is he does not blame the beasts.

“We both knew what would happen when father died,” Akhnadin says, still, and composed, and heart shuddering in his chest. “We knew what his death would mean.”

“But I am still not picking up his sword,” Akhnakanem has no composure. His head in his hands, and his crown sliding down his brow. He is barely sixteen, and Akhnadin is waning into his eleventh year, not yet a man, and this is too much for the two of them.

“I’m not asking you to,” Akhnadin insists, but Akhnakanem’s head raises and his eyes burn.

“I am not fighting his wars, brother,” Akhkanaem almost snarls at him. “You haven’t _seen_ what our father did, you can’t understand--”

“No I can’t, but that doesn’t matter now,” this feels unfair, but he doesn’t say as much. Akhnadin might have too young for war, but he is a son of Selk too. Instead, he focuses on the problem at hand. “The war is coming.”

“Not this. Never this,” Akhnakanem gets to his feet. “I can’t be him, I don’t _want_ to be him.”

Akhnadin stands before his brother, watching the differences between them. He stands straight, but he is lithe, thinner than his brother as though he is the shape formed from the cast of Akhnakanem, but his brother is _hollow_ , shoulders heavy with the burden of being _first_. For all it is worth, Akhnadin knows his edges are sharper than his brother’s.

He squares his stance, and opens his hands to his brother. “We cannot hold together a Kingdom that does not want to be held in the first place, brother. Nubia will be the first to rebel. You _must_ prepare for War.”

“No. I cannot. I will not.”

“You will not have a choice--”

“I will not ask my people to die for this crown,” Akhnakanem pulls it from his head, and Akhnadin can see where sweat has coated it. He can see his brother’s lip curl back. “There must be another way. We could… we could disrupt supplies.”

“Disrupt supplies,” Akhnadin repeats incredulously. “You mean burn their food, and gut their animals.”

“It is better than _war_.”

“Is it?” he demands. “Their children will _starve_ , but--” Akhnadin’s gut is swimming. “If we do nothing, they will come and it is our children who will die. Better we fight than kill children.”

Akhnakanem’s gaze reaches him, but it is little relief with their father’s _atrocities_ left for them to bury. “You don’t have any children, brother.”

“Neither do you,” Akhnadin’s mouth tries to smile, his words try to tease, and neither works. Sobering, Akhnadin presses, “I meant our people.”

“Our people then,” Akhnakanem agrees. “But if we go to war, we will all die. Our men, and our women, and our children.”

“Some may--”

“No,” Akhnakanem says softly. “I am not our father, and these are not his armies.”

No, those had died with Selk, and only now does Akhnadin realize that not only will Akhnakanem not raise the sword, but perhaps, he cannot.

“But if we do nothing,” Akhnadin murmurs, “the war will come to us and we will die anyway. And if we disrupt--”

“You were right, it is not right to be poetic about it.” Akhnakanem’s voice is chiding, but his hands are shaking on the crown, every part of him trembling as he finishes Akhnadin’s thought: “And if we kill children.”

“...Yes.” Akhnadin looks down. “If we kill children, we may live.”

Akhnakanem sounds deeply helpless when he speaks next. As though he is Akhnadin’s brother again: “Is there… nothing else we can do? No other choices?”

“Father left us nothing _else_ ,” Akhnadin feels helpless too.

“Please,” Akhnakanem is on his feet, and Akhnadin starts slightly, left foot stumbling back until he is off-balanced, disrespectful. Akhnakanem gathers him into his arms, uncaring. “There must be something else.”

Akhnadin’s voice wavers, trembling, “why have you asked me what I don’t know?” He is eleven, he is a full year away from being a man, and the God-King holds him in his arms, the brother who stood before him asks for help, and Akhnadin has _nothing_ to give.

He scarcely can hear his brother, but there it is, catching on the breath of him. “You are the only one I trust.”

A question slips from the Gods to Akhnadin’s heart, as if answering a prayer, an answer: _who did our father trust?_

* * *

_There is something obscene about my father’s hoard,_ Akhnadin thought _, like Ra upon his mountain of gold._

But then, whilst Selk ruled, he had claimed to be the son of Ra, and son of Serket both. There was nothing obscene about a God’s riches, and yet Akhnadin feels ill surveying the newly opened treasure house. He recalls several years ago when the sons of the master builder had been caught thieving through a secret passage. Where one of them had hung naked, and headless on the palace gates to rot in the sun, the other was now with him, carefully guiding him through the great treasures.

Akhnadin had never asked Siamun how it came to be that Selk spared him, but then, he did not want to know.

“Your father acquired this-” it was a child-sized bracelet in pretty, pure-looking silver, “before his death.” Siamun offers it towards Akhnadin, who made some show of looking at it.

Siamun, for his part, merely watched Akhnadin through his lashes, a wry smirk playing over his lips. Akhnadin was rarely inattentive, and Siamun had seen the young man barely glance over each treasure as Siamun had presented it.

“Prince Akhnadin, I have never known you to be dishonest,” Siamun says wryly, “but you have not been truthful about why we’re here.”

The bracelet is wrongly heavy in Akhnadin’s hand, and he lowers it to meet Siamun’s playful gaze.

“No… no I have not,” Akhnadin answers at last, before awkwardly holding out the silver bangle to Siamun. “I… wished to speak with you in private.”

“Oh?” Siamun replaced the silver piece, before smiling even more wryly at Akhnadin.

“I- yes,” Akhnadin looks over the treasure house, eyebrows furrowing. He tries to draw on a confidence he doesn’t feel; some of Akhnakanem’s strength, or even Selk’s. “You are-- you _were_ one of the men my father trusted the most, and--”

“He never trusted me,” Siamun interrupts, and where the amusement, even playfulness had been before, there was now a dangerous, clearness to his voice. “I was simply smarter than him.”

The heat had long been leached from the air by the stifling dark of the treasury, and the cool metals within it. The only warmth is what little their torches give off, and Akhnadin is abruptly aware that he is possibly in danger; Siamun’s brother had hung from their gates for days, unburied and unhonoured. He cannot imagine what he would do, but it is strong.

As quickly as the fear came, Akhnadin steels himself against it, strength found, and if Siamun was smarter than Selk, then Akhnadin could be smarter still.

“Then you were the smartest man my father knew,” Akhnadin says, just as boldly. “And I need someone smart, far more than someone trustworthy.”

He gestures to the treasures around them, the fire making the metals glow in the cold shadows, “my father killed half the men in all the world for this, and now their fathers, and their sons, and their brothers are coming to pay those debts back.”

He stares at Siamun levelly. “Our armies are crippled, we can neither go to war, nor defend ourselves,” a mild smile settled on Akhnadin’s face, “the King speaks of murdering children. What would a smart man do?”

“Leave,” Siamun answers honestly enough, but Akhnadin frowns.

“You didn’t leave.”

Siamun laughs then, the most irritating sound Akhnadin knows - like the kick and bray of a donkey - but he looked at Akhnadin with a new respect after that.

“No,” Siamun agrees, “I have not left, and I probably will not leave.”

“You didn’t leave when my father wanted you dead,” Akhnadin can remember that rage, gold-hot and silver-aching. His father had been so angry to have been stolen from.

“No, but I wanted to.” Siamun waited a little space, before once again looking at Akhnadin through his lashes. “Your father was not a smart man, but he wasn’t stupid either; he knew we would come, and so he waited for my brother and I.”

This is the story Akhnadin did not want to know.

“Selk’s men levelled swords at our throats.” Siamun went quiet, eyes distance. “He told us that we would die for stealing from him, and my brother told him he would starve in here.” Absently Siamun looked about the treasure-house, almost amused. “I told Selk that I would lead him out.”

Akhnadin stays still, letting the story bleed into the air, unwilling to disturb its evil process.

“I told your father that he should cut my brother’s head from its body, and hang his naked body on the gates as a warning, and if he let me live, I would never serve him loyally, but I would serve him faithfully.”

It is hideous to Akhnadin, the betrayal of brother and brother, the willing service to Selk’s sadism, and he stares at Siamun in open horror at the history, but Siamun merely shrugs. “My brother was better dead.” Siamun’s gaze is steady, and clear, and Akhnadin recognizes the pain in it. “Some men are.”

Akhnadin can scarcely breathe. “Why didn’t you run then?”

“Waset is my home,” Siamun says wistfully. “My brother was raised in Set Ma’at, like my father before him, but I was born in the city of the sceptre.”

“And…” Akhnadin’s hands are trembling, shaking uncontrollably, his strength fragile, “you served my father true?”

“No,” Siamun is lightly honest. “I told him the battle at Naqada would go in his favour.”

The cold in Akhnadin grew colder.

He should be afraid of Siamun, afraid of a half-blood tomb robber with a part in his father’s death, but instead Akhnadin simply lowers his gaze in acquiescence. “Thank you. My father is better dead.”

 _This was a test_ , Akhnadin would think later, but at the time, all he knew was Siamun took his hand gently.

“I know, my prince,” Siamun led them back towards the passageway safely, guiding Akhnadin in the darkness. “My brother would murder children.”

“My brother wouldn’t,” Akhnadin murmurs. Ahead of them, Akhnadin can see Siamun’s hand pressed to the cool stones, following it like braille, and he remembers that for later.

“Hm,” a sliver of light greets them, sliding through the darkness. “Then this true servant might advise you to give the nomes what they want.”

Akhnadin pauses, teeth nipping at his lip. “War?” he is incredulous. He goes still, half in shadow, half in light. “Nobody should die for this wretched kingdom anymore.”

“You are very young, Prince Akhnadin,” Siamun says, and this feels unfair, still. Akhnadin is the son of Selk; there is little youth left in him. And Siamun is not much older than his brother. “The cities do not want war, not with the children of _Selk_ , they want freedom.”

“They- they will think we’re weak.”

“We are,” Siamun agrees. “But they will think we’re strong. Merciful.” Siamun and Akhnadin watch each other, still trapped between the darkness and the light. “We will be better men than our fathers.”

Slowly, Akhnadin nods, a small jerk of his head, and Siamun finally leads them both out into the light.

* * *

Akhnakanem is crowned days later, and Akhnadin stands at his shadow, Siamun reflected on the other side. They stand before their people, and Akhnakanem is a brighter thing than Akhnadin knows, eyes glowing, and gold shining _._

“We are better men than our fathers,” Akhnakanem says, every part of his voice is light itself. He ends the first war of his reign that day, and he frees what is not his, but Akhnadin’s strength is failing him.

That night, he dreams of his brother’s hands, at his throat like blades. His father’s hands, familiar, but this time, silver with blood. The treasure house, hungry and dark. The fire bright, and hungry in their hearts. Father, and son, terribly, terribly golden, and Akhnadin wakes screaming, sheets pissed through, and sweat running down his throat.

This goes on for night, after night, until the final agreements are made, and the last nome is freed. Only then do Akhnadin’s dreams fade, and finally wash away.


End file.
